$5,000 per sign in Tulsa?

The Tulsa World reports today that the city of Tulsa is putting up new signs to direct drivers and pedestrians downtown. Isn’t that great? Well, it may not be so wonderful for taxpayers, who are stuck with a tax increase to cover the substantial cost of the signage.

The funding for Way Finding, totaling nearly $740,000 for the 148 signs, was through the third penny sales-tax program in 2006, said a Tulsa Public Works Department senior engineer, Glen Sams. The designs were discussed in a committee of downtown and city leaders, he said.

“We started last fall on various options, sizes and color,” Sams said. “This was an art deco design and we thought it needed art deco colors.”

I’m glad they decided on art deco, but who decided on price? Call me crazy, but doesn’t $5,000 per sign seem just a little steep?

Other questions that immediately arise:
*Who was the vendor?
*How was the vendor selected?
*Was this project competitively bid?
*Did the vendor send campaign contributions to city officials responsible for the signage decisions?
*What does Oklahoma City and surrounding towns pay for signage?

I’m not sayin’… I’m just askin’.

Double Duty for Rhode Island Open Books

I wrote about a new transparency site for Rhode Island last week, but neglected to mention the other groundbreaking site there- the Ocean State Policy Research Institute’s Transparency Train. This website works to publicly display budgets, payrolls, contracts and the monthly check registers for every city, town and school district in Rhode Island.

It looks like Rhode Island has twice the transparency now, which is outstanding. I can’t wait to see what’s uncovered with these two sites sniffing out waste and inefficiency.

Colorado: No Taxation Without Information!

Suppose you had a son, and you gave him fifty dollars to spend on whatever items he needed for the week. Suppose your son came back to you a day later, asking for more money. What would your first question be to him? My bet’s on: What did you buy with the first $50 I gave you?

Government should be monitored the same way. There should be spending transparency in all levels, so taxpayers can trust their money is being used wisely and efficiently. If the Colorado government uses tax dollars to support a bloated bureaucracy that doesn’t use competitive bidding practices and sets inappropriate priorities, then possibly it needs to have some internal reform before three ballot initiatives pass that will raise taxes. Does Colorado have a bloated bureaucracy? No one knows, nor will know, as long as there is no transparency.

The Independence Institute makes the same point in another op-ed, this time for the Denver Daily News. Read it here.
If the Colorado government cannot be trusted to explain to taxpayers how their money is currently being used, why would voters give it more cash?

Keep the drum-beat going: NO TAXATION WITHOUT INFORMATION!

Independence Institute: Colorado needs open government

Amy Oliver and Stephanie Kubala of the Colorado Independence Institute wrote a great op-ed discussing the need for transparency in Colorado’s government spending, especially as state taxes and fees have soared there in the last decade, nearly doubling the state budget since 2000.

And still, tax-eaters demand more. Oliver and Kubala cite three 2008 ballot measures that could raise taxes- Amendment 51, Amendment 58, and House Speaker Andrew Romanoff’s SAFE initiative.

Taxpayers should demand a complete accounting of every penny, and if officials are unable to do so, then maybe budgets are too big already.

Thanks to the Sam Adams Alliance, Colorado taxpayers have a new motto: No taxation without information!

Providing information is easy. Simply put government check registries online in a searchable database that includes contracts, grants and expenditures.

More than 20 states, including Kansas, Minnesota, Florida and New York already do this in some fashion.

According to the article, Colorado does have some leadership in the transparency movement, praising the Fort Collins city council, State Representative Don Marostica, the Colorado Press Association for their advocacy of opening the books.

Oliver and Kubala’s advice:

When some elected official or special interest group want to increase your taxes, you have a response: No taxation without information!

Tax dollars- down to the agency, person and penny

“We want to show Maine taxpayers — down to the agency, person and penny — where their dollars go. How can you get the most bang for the taxpayer’s buck?” Tarren Bragdon of the Maine Heritage Policy Center explained to the Bangor Daily News as the reason for launching a new website, MaineOpenGov.org.

The state of Maine paid more money in overtime than it did in salary in 2007 to a nurse at the Dorothea Dix Psychiatric Center in Bangor.

A civil engineer with the Maine Department of Transportation racked up $16,000 in mileage reimbursements.

And the state of Maine spent $80,980 on bottled water.

If you’ve ever wondered where your tax dollars are going, the brand new MaineOpenGov.org Web site is for you. The site offers searchable databases of public information, including the payrolls of state employees, University of Maine System employees and money spent on goods, services and entertainment.

I had the opportunity to sit through a sneak peek presentation of this site and its sister site, See Through New York, a few weeks ago at a conference in Phoenix, and am thrilled that I now get a chance to toy with the numbers myself.

Congratulations to the Maine Heritage Policy Center for a great tool in the battle against government waste.

Rhode Island Follows the Money Trail

The Rhode Island Statewide Coalition (RISC) has released The Money Trail, a transparency website aimed at giving Rhode Islanders more information on how their government spends taxpayer dollars at multiple levels, as well as providing a platform for educated action. According to their website, The Money Trail works to track government budgets, actual expenditures, payroll, contracts, comprehensive plans, tax delinquencies, and foreclosures at the state, municipal and school district levels. You will also find report cards on government compliance with this transparency initiative, as well as the fiscal health of each government entity.

Seems like a giant step forward for a tiny state.

CLC Transparency Panel

I apologize for the sporadic posting lately- I took a brief vacation, and spent some time in Las Vegas to attend the Conservative Leadership Conference, which included a lot of transparency discussion of tactics and tools.

CLC panelists took advantage of their platform to promote their transparency resources. I have listed a few of those below:

Transparent Nevada
Americans for Tax Reform
Missouri Accountability Portal
Ballotpedia
Sunshine Review

Other highlights from CLC were presentations by the Leadership Institute, John Fund, Congressman Shadegg, Thomas Keene, and an amazing performance by The Cactus Cuties.

Congratulations to Michael Brogkorb from Minnesota Democrats Exposed, winner of the Conservative Blogger of the Year award for his work to provide transparency regarding Al Franken’s tax documents.

Thank you to Chuck Muth of Citizen Outreach for hosting the conference. Can’t wait to do it all again next year!

Nevada Transparency Sites

Sometimes when an idea is good once, it’s better twice- which is the case with Nevada’s new transparency websites.

The Nevada Policy Research Institute launched TransparentNevada.com this week, which includes searchable county and state financial data such as purchasing contracts, budgets, government employee salaries, lobbying expenses. The site also includes some departmental expenditures (education, transportation, and Health and Human Services), and a blog.

Nevada Governor Jim Gibbons hopped on the transparency bandwagon, forcing transparency by executive order last March. Nevada Open Government should be up and running soon, and will include searchable budgets, expenditures, contracts, and grants. If you go to the site now, you are greeted with links to miscellaneous financial data and reports.

These two websites will hopefully mean double trouble for the state’s tax-eaters and rent-seekers.

A dose of Common Sense for California

Great transparency article from Paul Jacob on Sept 12th. (reprinted with permission)

You can see this article as well as Paul’s other columns at ThisIsCommonSense.com:

© Is for California

You might think that there’s nothing a government won’t try. You’d be right. But I was near stupefied to learn that the state of California copyrights its laws. And it’s not alone.

The state tries to control — through copyright — how you can access its laws, where and how you store them, etc. The state makes available its building codes, plumbing standards and criminal laws online, but requires you to ask for permission to download them!

The state’s out to make money. It charges $1,556 for a digital version, more for a print-out, and makes nearly a million dollars a year selling what is legally ours.

Yes, what’s ours. We are a nation of laws, not of men, and we have the right to own and reprint our laws as much as we want. The purpose of copyright is to ensure private parties can maintain some control over their intellectual property. But the laws themselves are, in point of elementary political theory, the intellectual property of all. Not of state bureaus.

Thankfully, heroic Internet technician and mover and shaker Carl Malamud believes in government transparency. And he, unlike Al Gore, really worked to help build the Internet.

On Labor Day Mr. Malamud published the whole California code online. Available for free.

Obviously, Malamud is spoiling for a fight. Good. He should win it. He has, after all, the law (if not the state) on his side.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick Admits He Lied Under Oath

Nothing is more disappointing than when a public official believes they are above the law and abuses the public trust. That is exactly what happened with Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick. His decision to lie under oath and to continue to deny it has cost the taxpayers of Detroit thousands of dollars and brought shame upon every elected official in Michigan. I hope the stiff penalties that Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick is facing will serve as a warning to other elected officials that it is better to tell the truth than lie to the American people.

If you would like more information about this item I have posted an article about the subject.

Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick, who will lose his job because he lied while under oath at a police whistle-blower trial, has just pledged to tell the truth as he prepares to admit his guilt as part of a plea deal he just struck with the Wayne County Prosecutor.
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The deal calls for Kilpatrick to plead guilty to two felony counts of obstruction of justice by committing perjury, agreeing to serve four months in jail, pay up to $1 million in restitution, and serve five years’ probation. He also agreed not to run for office during that five-year span.

The mayor will turn over his state pension to the City of Detroit, which paid $8.4 million to settle two whistle-blower lawsuits three former cops filed against the city. The mayor was charged with eight felony counts ranging from conspiracy to perjury to misconduct in office to obstruction of justice after the Free Press revealed that the mayor lied on the witness stand during a police whistle-blower trial and gave misleading testimony about whether he intended to fire a deputy police chief investigating allegations of wrongdoing by members of his inner circle.

In a rushed monotone, Kilpatrick told the court: “I lied under oath in the case of Gary Brown and Harold Nelthrope versus the city of Detroit … I did so with the intent to mislead the court and jury, to impede and obstruct the disposition of justice.”

Click here to read the rest of the story.

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